The Simulation of Energy Consumption Behavior in Greenhouse Systems of Yazd County

The energy reality constructed by farmers, whose connections with energy resources, the ways they perceive them and the kind of valuing the energy sources, all determine the modality of energy consumption in agriculture community. As a result, present study aims at simulating the greenhouse farmers’ energy consumption behavior in Yazd county. Research population consisted of all the greenhouse farmers raising cucumber in 2012-2013. from 2076 greenhouse farmers, 322 ones were selected in random stratified sampling. The human ecology and goal-based theories were theoretically base used to explain the interactions of greenhouse farmers with the energy resources. To analyze the data and simulate energy consumption scenarios, the software of SPSS (version 12) and Netlogo were used, respectively. It was found that after changing in the value of the predictor parameters of the behavioral intention, e.g., “environmental paradigm, “incentives of changing the energy use behavior and attitude” and “attitude towards the targeted energy subsidy plan”, the power-saving amounted to about 15% in greenhouse systems. Furthermore, by changing the life-time of appliances, the power-saving amounted between 57% and 77%. In order to optimize the energy consumption, paper recommends some practical solutions and implications.